How Guardian Weekly rebranded from a newspaper to glossy magazine

The Guardian Weekly was founded in 1919 at the end of World War I. Director of Publishing Mylene Sylvestre explained the founding principles of the century-old newspaper.

Speaking at INMA Media Innovation Week in Hamburg, Sylvestre explained that at the time, it was launched as a “window to the world” of Guardian journalism for people outside the UK.

The Guardian Weekly was completely rebranded at its 100-year anniversary in October 2019, following the footsteps of weekly magazines like The New Yorker and The Economist.

“We saw a trend in the market with glossy news weeklies doing really well,” Sylvestre said. “We said that maybe there actually is an opportunity here for the weekly to morph into a magazine and so that’s what we did.”

The rebranding took The Guardian Weekly from a newspaper format to a magazine format. “It’s been quite successful,” Sylvestre reported.